


So Far So Good

by ecphrasis



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Modern with Bending (Avatar), Azula (Avatar) Needs a Hug, Bisexual Zuko (Avatar), Caldera City, Explicit Consent, F/M, Fire Lord Zuko, Male-Female Friendship, POV Alternating, Party, The Gaang saved the world, Two Shot, six years later
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:14:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25389610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ecphrasis/pseuds/ecphrasis
Summary: The party’s only getting louder. At some point during the past hour or so, they’ve made the switch from the stately, traditional waltzes and the ceremonial folk dances (all carefully proscribed by the Master of Ceremonies to avoid any imperialist overtones) to the technopop electronica that’s favored by the club scene in downtown Caldera City, and the low bass thuds through the thin palace walls, pulsing like a heartbeat.“I shouldn’t be here,” he says. “I should be there.” He points towards his door, aware that he’s officially no longer sober even as he does it. “I have to talk to people.”“You’re the Fire Lord. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”“That’s the lie they tell you to make you take the job,” he says.“You gonna go?” She asks him. Her hand slips down the side of his chest, and even though he’s wearing the five layered formal, ceremonial robes of the Fire Lord that he thinks look vaguely like a very expensive dressing gown, he feels her touch. He cards his fingers through the free-floating curls that frame her face.“Are you?” He asks her.
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar), Sokka/Suki (Avatar)
Comments: 68
Kudos: 235





	1. The Party Lord bows out

“Fuck them all,” he says, out loud, to himself, like a crazy person. He’s had enough wine to loosen his tongue, far more than the solitary glass he normally permits himself with dinner. He’s annoyed by the swirling, garrulous courtiers who fill the palace, snapping pictures of themselves with busts of his ancestors, and livestreaming the reception hall, and guesstimating the cost of the desserts. He’s irritated by the parade of men and women who come to greet him, done up in gems and jewels and cloth-of-gold and thousand year old family heirlooms, oohing over his scar and commenting on his victory.

Hypocrites.

Certainly none of them aided him when he and his friends were hiding out in the abandoned Air Nomad city. Certainly none of these prancing, posturing, priggish peacocks ever lifted a finger to stop Ozai’s genocide of the Water Tribes. 

He likes the common people of the Fire Nation, loves them, in fact. It’s the hereditary nobility that he wants to get rid of.

Maybe next year. 

Maybe never.

“Flameo, Hotman,” Katara says, plopping down beside him. He’s hidden himself in the shadows of the upper balcony with a bottle of wine and two different escape routes.

“Waveo, Waterwoman,” he responds, and pulls another deep draught.

“You didn’t feel like dancing?” She asks. He shakes his head. The tulle of her gown rustles as she adjusts her long legs, and he offers her the bottle he’s been drinking from. She takes a long sip, and he’s conscious of watching the way she swallows the liquid, her delicate throat exposed to the candlelight, the fire in the sconces flickering off her mother’s necklace. “For a king,” she says. “You have terrible taste in wine.”

“It was the first bottle I grabbed,” he says. “The caterer wanted a picture with me.”

“Uh-huh, any excuse. I remember what you drank on Ember Island, that wasn’t any better.” He sighs, and drinks again, waiting for the fuzzy cloud of alcohol to dampen the sharp, grinding feeling in his heart. “What’s up, Zuko?” She asks.

“Nothing,” he says, knowing he sounds sullen. 

“So you’re just hiding in the shadows of your own party for the fun of it?”

“Maybe I don’t feel like celebrating anything,” he says. She takes his hand in hers, and he’s not surprised to find that she’s removed the elbow-length gloves that have come roaring back into fashion recently. She likes to feel the water in the air, and she can’t do that through a layer of fabric.

“I know,” she says. And she does know. She was with him on Victory Day, she was the one who breathed life back into his body, raised him from the dead, and proclaimed him Fire Lord. She was the one who saw his sister’s descent into madness, saw poor Azula, a girl, an abuse victim, a general, a monster, a child, snap, utterly and completely. “How is she?” Katara asks. “I haven’t seen her since the winter solstice last year.”

“She has good days, and bad ones. More good than bad, most of the time. Her doctors say they think she can eventually recover enough to leave the home and live somewhere, provided she has a caretaker.”

“That’s good,” Katara says.

“We had an incident today,” Zuko tells her. He’s not sure why he’s telling her, it’ll be on the news tonight and then she’ll know anyway, but he’s had enough wine to loosen his tongue and send his mind running. “Some teenagers broke into her facility, found her, filmed everything. Asked her how she felt about Victory Day, Ozai, my uncle, me. The works.”

“Oh Zuko-” Katara sighs, and her sympathy soothes him. Usually he’s irritated when people try to coddle him, but rarely by Uncle, and never by Katara. She’s too genuine for him to imagine mockery beneath her kindness.

“She had an episode, a bad one. Panic attack, screaming, everything. And they filmed it.”

“Poor Azula,” Katara says. Azula had tried to kill her, had directed her white lightning right at Katara’s heart, in violation of the sacred rules of the Agni Kai, but Katara had been the first to visit her in her institution, afterwards. Zuko draws another deep draught, the liquid sliding over his tongue, and he passes the bottle to Katara, who does the same, and makes a face. “Zuko,” she says. “I really can’t drink this.”

“When did you become a wine snob?”

“You don’t have to be a gourmand to refuse to eat pigslop.”

“I don’t remember you being so critical of Sokka’s attempt at home-brewed rice wine when we were hiding out on Ember Island six years ago.”

“When you’re in a palace, live like the king,” she responds. “I prefer to chase inebriation in style.” But nevertheless, she takes another deep sip, and hands the wine back to him. He should have grabbed two bottles, or three, but he was so desperate to escape the fawning crowd of admirers that he’d only managed to steal one.

“Why are you here, hiding in the shadows of a party thrown in your honor?” He asks. The edges of his vision are finally beginning to fade, and the knot in his throat is looser than it was a few minutes ago.

“I’m not in a celebrating mood,” she says.

“I’ll drink to that.” And he does, swilling the wine in his mouth. She’s right. He’s no sommelier, but it truly is not a good vintage. “I saw your _Dernier Cri_ magazine cover,” he says. She flushes pink, and he’s amused at how little it takes to get her to blush. She never used to be so easy to tease. “Powerbender, Princess, Peacemaker: Katara of the Southern Watertribe discusses her rise to fame and her plans for the future six years on.”

“Did you see it or memorize it?” She asks, and it’s his turn to feel the redness pooling in his cheeks.

“Well, with that photo-”

“Come on, it’s majorly photoshopped. I do not look like that, and I can’t bend like that either.”

“I’ll concede the first, abstain on the second, and deny the third.” She rolls her eyes, and demands the bottle. “It was a great photo,” he says, and she slaps his arm. “Hey! I’m serious. Very avant-garde.” He strikes some semblance of the pose the photographer had her take, his arms raised, his teeth bared.

“You’re the worst!” She exclaims, fighting to keep in her laughter.

“Heard that before.”

“Besides, I’ve seen the preview pics for the docuseries they’re making. Just how much red and gold did you think was necessary? The interview room is positively drowning in Fire Nation colors.”

“Well, I don’t want people to forget who I am. In case they fall asleep, and wake up confused about who the schmuck on their TV is, they can look at my gold-encrusted furniture on my red shag carpet and figure it out.” She offers him the wine back, and he shakes it. There’s only a few mouthfuls left. “I think I looked exceptionally handsome in my red silk robes.”

“I’ll abstain from commenting,” she teases, and, taking the bottle, she drains it. The light hits her body, highlighting her shimmering ballgown, her hair, some strands framing her delicate face, most held back by moonflower-shaped sapphire hair pins, his gift to her, he realizes, from the last winter solstice. “I don’t know about you, Hotman,” she says. “But I’ve built up a pretty substantial tolerance to alcohol, and I want more wine.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Me too.”

“I’m picking this time,” she says. She draws him to his feet, and her hands are cool in his, her palms calloused from long hours spent bending.

“Fair enough,” he says. Her lips are round and pink, probably one of Suki’s newest shades of lipstick. She sends him all her products, wrapped in Earth Kingdom green packaging, and he delivers them faithfully to Azula, once every six months or so. Initially, she’d destroyed them, but he’d actually seen her wearing the eyeliner on his last visit. “Congrats, by the way.”

“On what?”

“The article said you got accepted into the University of Ba Sing Se School of Medicine.”

“Oh,” she says, and again, she flushes a flower-soft shade of pink. It’s an enchanting contrast to the lovely dark color of her skin. “Well, they weren’t exactly going to refuse one of the Avatar’s best friends, now were they?”

“Come on,” he says. “I saw you studying for the MCAT like your life depended on it. I know how hard you worked. It has nothing to do with Aang.”

“Thanks, Zuko,” she says, and he feels a jolt of electricity race down his spine when she says his name, so powerful that he almost wonders if he’s been struck by lightning. 

“How’s your dad feel about it?”

“He’s over the moon. I’m pretty sure he’s photocopied my acceptance letter twenty separate times, because he keeps forgetting how to save a PDF file, and he’s sent it to every single councilman he’s talked with in the past decade.”

“And Sokka?”

“You know Sokka,” she says with an eye roll. “Told me I should charge them for accepting me, rather than the other way round. Says I’ll make it the most popular medical school in the world by attending.”

“He’s not wrong.” Zuko says. “I saw your feature in _Bellwether_ and they called you Chief Trendbender of Our Age.”

“Is your job as Fire Lord just scrapbooking my media appearances?” She asks with a hearty laugh, and he feels the flush rising to his cheeks again. He hasn’t had enough wine to be so easily embarrassed.

“That’s a pretty substantial part of it,” he says. He scans his thumb on a digital reader, and the iron door springs open soundlessly.

“Hey, the catering kitchens aren’t down here!”

“You’re the one complaining about my choice in wine. I’m just giving you options. Surely you’ve seen the royal cellars?”

“I haven’t, actually,” she says. “You let Sokka choose last time, and Suki the time before that, and before that Aang, and before that-”

“Okay, okay, I admit my fault. It’s your choice now, Powerbender. Choose away.” He pulls open an oak door (more than a thousand years old, according to his uncle) and she gasps at the extent of the cellars. 

“You’ve got an ocean of wine down here,” she says, and he leans against the wall, watching her make her way down the narrow rows, pulling out a bottle to inspect, or peering up at the cobwebbed barrels on the top shelf. She’s beautiful, he realizes with a jolt. Her gown is sewn by one of the up and coming fashion designers in the South Pole, he’d watched a tell-all about it on one of those dreadful daytime talk shows during a break in his agricultural subsidies meeting. The dress’s cut is extraordinarily flattering, accentuating the curve of her hips and suggesting the ocean’s waves with its short train. The color too is stunning, a lighter version of the traditional Water Tribe blue. “How do you feel about the 91 Calon-Segrey?” she asks, and realizes that he has been staring.

“Great,” he says. She brings a somewhat dusty bottle to him, and he demonstrates the wine opener he nicked from the kitchens with a flourish.

“I don’t want to dirty my dress,” she says. “Could we go somewhere?”

“Sure,” he says. “The gardens are all open to the public-”

“I’d rather avoid having my picture snapped by a bunch of like-hungry harpies.”

“We could go back to our hiding spot.”

“It’s too exposed. Someone might try to talk to us. Where’re your rooms?”

“Oh,” he says. He’s aware he sounds like an idiot, and that he’s blushing, but hopefully Katara is not. “Um, pretty close, actually.”

“Great,” she says. “Lead the way, Fire Lord.” She takes his hand again, and a pang of something fiery and feral shoots through his heart and dissipates into his blood. He has got to get control of himself. He takes her the short distance to his rooms, and unlocks his door, again with his thumb. “New security system?” She asks.

“Installed this spring,” he says. “It was a pain at first, but my guards assure me it’s much safer.”

“Did something happen?” She asks, and he flinches at the concern in her voice.

“Couple of people broke in, that’s all. Damaged some relics, burned a journalist. Typical mindless terrorists.”

“Oh Zuko,” she says, and his stomach simmers at the way she says his name. He wonders, before he can stop himself, how she would murmur it with him buried inside of her. 

Mentally, he slaps himself.

“It wasn’t anything too terrible,” he says. “We’re just being cautious.” He twists the wine opener into the cork and levers it out, and hands her the bottle. “I have glasses somewhere, if you prefer.”

“No,” she says. “The bottle’s fine, it will bring back old memories.” He sprawls on one of the long red couches before his fire, and he expects her to take the one opposite, but instead, she resumes her usual place at his right. That’s how they ate, on the run, camping in abandoned buildings, or fleeing through cities under curfew. Katara on Zuko’s right, Toph on his left, Sokka across from him, Aang flitting between them, Suki and Haru and whoever else happened to be traveling with them sprawled wherever was most comfortable. She presses against him, and he wonders if she’s cold.

“Thoughts?” He asks, after she swallows her first sip.

“It’s good,” she says. “Here, have some.” He catches the scent of her perfume as she hands him the bottle, and he swears he can taste her mixed into the wine.

“A fine choice,” he says. She grins at him, and he cannot help glancing at her lips, soft and perfectly outlined in pink.

“Sometimes I think it’s all a dream,” she says. “I think I’m going to wake up, and it’ll be the day of the comet, and the world will fall apart.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Sometimes I wake up and I think I’m still on board my ship, hunting the Avatar, or else lost in Ba Sing Se.”

“Do you think it would be easier if there weren’t parties and parades and TV specials?” She asks. He taps his fingers together, considering, and she leans her head on his shoulder. He stiffens, and she immediately pulls away, but some brave spirit must momentarily possess him, because he draws her back, into him, and she snuggles towards his warmth. The sapphire moonstones glimmer in her hair, her dress is soft beneath his fingers.

“It's not the parties. Sometimes those are fun. I hate that they make it a production,” he says. “I hate how they frame everything we did as destiny, when we all truly believed we were going to die.”

“It’s so they don’t feel bad about not helping us,” she says. “The people who did help us, the girl in Omashu who gave us her family’s bread ration, the father in Hamar who washed our laundry and made us tea, the homeless woman who let me use her phone to call my dad, they didn’t talk about destiny. They just helped. And that’s more than anyone dancing at our victory party did.”

“Yeah,” he says. “That’s what I was thinking earlier. Most of them would be just as happy to dance at one of Ozai’s revels. They don’t care who is in charge, so long as they get to look pretty and drink wine and take glamour shots.” 

“Fuckers,” she says, and has a sip of wine. “All of them.”

“Amen,” he says, and takes the wine from her, and drinks.

“You’re comfortable,” she says, pressing into him, hiding her nose in his neck. He can feel every hair follicle stand straight up, and the glow of arousal ignites his stomach. He sets the bottle down, still mostly full, and draws her into him. “So warm,” she says.

“I’m a firebender.”

“You are? I had no idea.” 

“Do you wanna know something embarrassing?” He asks her, and she nods. Little sparks simmer where her nose brushes against the skin. “Pyro Publishing asked me to be the face of July in their World’s Sexiest Firebenders calendar for next year.” She laughs, and he flushes.

“I hope you said yes!”

“I most certainly did not. World’s Sexiest Firebender, Master July is not a good look for the Fire Lord. Especially if someone else wins Firebender of the Year.”

“Everything looks good on you,” she says, offhand, and then she pulls her head from his neck (he suppresses his sigh at the loss of contact) and she grins at him, her eyes gleaming. “Do you want to know something embarrassinger?”

“Desperately.” He says

“Suki’s bought me that calendar for the past three winter solstices.”

“Really?” He asks, chuckling. “Why?”

“She’s convinced that sexy firebender is my type.” 

“Is it?” He asks, and he’s pleased that his voice is steady, smooth, lightly teasing.

“Depends on the firebender,” she says, and he feels a shock of pure desire when her blue eyes meet his. Her mouth is plump, pink, round, and she arches up towards him. But he’s spent the previous five Victory Days with five different people, and he can’t make Katara the sixth. 

He pulls her closer to him, and his blurry world becomes all Katara, bare skin and tangling tulle, her body at least three degrees colder than his. She’s so comfortable, she fits between his arm and his chest like she belongs there. They’d spent more than a few nights curled like this, conserving warmth in the worst of the winter. Admittedly, they hadn’t been wearing such fine clothes back then.

They’re too close for this to be entirely friendly, but her weight is grounding, and he’s disinclined to move.

“What did you get for Suki?” He asks, tracing a finger down the length of one of her perfectly pressed curls. She reddens again.

“Last year, I got her a subscription to a serialized erotic internet comic about her and Ty Lee,” she says. 

“How’d Sokka take that?” Zuko asks. 

“Oh, he was amused. Said they made a more handsome couple anyway.”

“Hmph, I wish I could have seen his face.”

“Well, let that be your incentive to come to our winter solstice party this year. I promise to find something even better.”

“I was sorry to miss it,” he says.

“Everyone liked your gifts,” she says. “Sokka still hasn’t stopped bugging me to play Pai Sho with him, and Suki thought the virtual training simulator was incredible. And when Toph got her invitation to compete in the Firebending Fights, I honestly thought she might combust. And,” she touches her hair. “Obviously I liked mine. You’ve got good taste.”

“Thanks,” he says. “I was nervous. It’s a dangerous proposition, buying jewelry for the Trendbender of our age.”

“Tui, you’re the worst,” she snorts. “Here I was complimenting you, and-”

“I was complimenting you!” He protests, and she rolls her eyes.

“You know, I’ve read articles about you too. There was one in _Women’s Quarterly_ just last month.” He groans, starting to protest, but she talks over him.

“'The Fire Lord with the Heart of Ice: Why Brooding Antiheroes Define Our Generation.' And the pictures-”

“Hey, those pictures were taken out of context!”

“Uh-huh. I’m sure there was a lot of context to explain your dramatic scowl on a couch draped in firefox skins, very much without a shirt.”

“I was being annoyed,” he said. “It’s not my fault my publicist forgot to include a clause about reviewal rights.”

“I thought the expose on your love life was pretty funny too.”

“What love life?” He asks, deadpan, and she giggles.

“Precisely the point of the article! He’s the most eligible bachelor in town, but no one’s managed to fan the flames of Zuko’s heart.”

“Damn right,” he says. The wine no longer tastes of alcohol at all, it slides down his throat like water. His mood, he finds, has been much improved. “Maybe if they spent less time making me scowl at them-”

“Hah! I knew it was staged!”

“-and more time letting me rule, I’d find a girl to drag to the opera and the theater and dinners and dances.”

“Write an editorial,” she says, and takes the bottle from him, and drinks.

The party’s only getting louder. At some point during the past hour or so, they’ve made the switch from the stately, traditional waltzes and the ceremonial folk dances (all carefully proscribed by the Master of Ceremonies to avoid any imperialist overtones) to the technopop electronica that’s favored by the club scene in downtown Caldera City, and the low bass thuds through the thin palace walls, pulsing like a heartbeat.

“I shouldn’t be here,” he says. “I should be there.” He points towards his door, aware that he’s officially no longer sober even as he does it. “I have to talk to people.”

“You’re the Fire Lord. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”

“That’s the lie they tell you to get you to take the job,” he says. 

“You gonna go?” She asks him. Her hand slips down the side of his chest, and even though he’s wearing the five layered formal, ceremonial robes of the Fire Lord that he thinks look vaguely like a very expensive dressing gown, he feels her touch. He cards his fingers through the free-floating curls that frame her face.

“Are you?” He asks her.

“Sokka and Suki left a while ago,” she says. “And Toph challenged one of your guards to a bend-off that she won, hands down, obviously, and made him buy her a drink, and Haru and Teo are wheedling the DJ into playing some awful new Earth Rock hit, and Aang and Mai were having a very serious chat in the corner when last I saw.”

“Not an answer,” he says.

“Everybody’s paired off,” she says. “And I hate Victory Day already, but it’s worse alone.”

“You’re not alone, Kat,” he says. She presses her lips to his, and her mouth is just as soft and yielding as he had imagined. The wine in his blood ignites, he wraps his arm around her and draws her closer to him, relishing the bare skin of her back and the warmth of her body and the little sound that rises from her throat when he nips the tender skin of her neck. She reaches for him, drawing him on top of her, and he feels the blood pounding in his head, and the prickles of arousal clawing down his spine. “Katara,” he breathes. Sokka is going to kill him.

“Zuko,” she says, and the sound of his name on her lips thrills her. It’s so much better than the woman he kissed last year, or the man the year before-

Katara’s one of his best friends. Maybe his best, if he’s being honest. Katara’s the one he’ll send screenshots of his ministers’ infuriating comments, Katara’s the one he calls when Azula’s mind won’t permit her any peace, Katara’s the one who answered his phone call, even though it was 3AM her time, when Ozai’s latest lead on his mother was revealed to be only another fabrication. 

He’d expected to leave a message asking her to call him back. She told him he was on the shortlist of people whose calls she didn’t silence past midnight.

“Katara,” he says, and her hands drift lower, and now that he’s kissed her, he’s going to wonder about the rest of her for the rest of his life. But. “Katara, wait, wait.” She pauses, and he pulls back. “I can’t. Not with you.”

The hurt that blossoms on her face is instantaneous. So much for the silver tongue that _Women’s Quarterly_ made so much of.

“Um,” he says. “That came out wrong. I want to. Obviously. But not like this. Drunk. On Victory Day.”

“Okay,” she says. He’s wounded her pride, he knows the look. This is why friends aren’t supposed to kiss each other. He’s never kissed Sokka (well, there was one time, but that was an accident and they had both put it behind them), and he’d never kissed Aang, and he had kissed Mai, but that had been a disaster, and certainly he’d never kissed Tai Lee. She’s detangling her limbs, and he fights for some words that will fix the situation.

“It’s just,” he says. “I always sleep with someone on Victory Day. And it never works, because the next morning I’m still just as unhappy, except I have to kick somebody out of my bed who’s had too much wine. And I don’t want it to be like that with us.”

“You’re right,” she says, and her voice is light, too light. “You’re right, Zuko, I’m sorry, I should have asked before I kissed you.”

“Don’t go,” he says. “Stay.”

“I can’t,” she says. “Zuko, I need to meditate, or-”

“Will you go to the theater with me?” He asks, because that seems like a good way to detour the conversation.

“What?”

“The theater. Or the opera. Maybe the movie screening about the life of Roku in a month?”

“As friends, or-”

“No,” he says. He really should just accept Iroh’s flirting lessons and endure the humiliation, because he can’t go on making such a fool of himself. “Like with dinner and candles and stuff. And flowers.”

“Oh,” she says. Her voice is uncertain. “Are you asking me on a date?”

“Um, yes?”

“Sure,” she says. He looks at her, astonished that that worked. Maybe he is getting smoother.

“Really?”

“Zuko, I’ve been forwarding you my trip itineraries, complete with free evenings, for the past two years.” She has, now that he thinks about it. He’d just assumed she was very organized.

“Oh,” he says. “So, you’re free this weekend?”

“What are we seeing?”

“It’s an old play that they’ve recently redone, perhaps you’ve heard of it. _The Boy in the Iceberg_?”

“Ugh, you really are the worst,” she says, but she nestles under his arm and rests her head on his chest.


	2. Katara makes a listicle of ways she'd like to kill Ozai, among other happenings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this started being a short joke and has now become, somehow, a long joke? I don't know where this story is going but it's going somewhere, and I'm just along for the ride. Let me know your thoughts and feelings!

Katara wakes up to a dry mouth and a fuzzy head and a crick in her neck and three hundred and eighty seven text messages and her name trending on Twitter, in conjunction with Zuko’s.

Her headache worsens.

She opens up her missed calls, and finds her publicist has filled her entire inbox, leaving no room for Haru’s messages, or Toph’s, or Aang’s. She’s in her guest room, tucked under her covers, and she has vague memories of leaning against Zuko as he guided her back through the twisty halls of his palace. She cringes as she remembers their conversation, and she cringes more when she picks up the newspaper slipped under her door, and finds a picture of herself and Zuko hidden in the balcony, drinking from the same bottle of wine.

She doesn’t remember standing that close to him, nor does she remember her cleavage being quite so pronounced, still less the animalistic hunger in his eyes, but that’s the press for you.

 **Fire AND Ice?** The headline questions, and she’s mad about the invasion of her privacy, sure, but she’s also just a little bit mad at the unoriginality of the title. She’s a biochem major and she could think of something a bit more nuanced. 

When Katara was recovering from her nervous breakdown, after she almost drowned her father alive, believing herself, for a moment, trapped in the narrow, lightless prison beneath Ba Sing Se, her therapist had suggested making mental lists to ground herself whenever she felt stressed or scared or annoyed. So, Katara’s mind jots down a bullet-point. _Fucking kill whoever leaked those photos._

She knows Zuko’s awake, because it’s midday, and no matter how long he stayed up the night before, he’s clinically incapable of remaining in bed past dawn. It’s a testament to the strength of Ozai’s childhood conditioning program that he managed to created a nation of early risers through severe corporal punishment and racist insinuations about the suspect heritage of slugabeds. 

She’s always taken a perverse pleasure in lounging around his palace until noon.

Her phone vibrates, and she sees it’s Suki. Since Suki is only responsible for one of her hundreds of unread texts, she answers.

“From one savior of the world to another, greetings.” It’s a grim joke, it’s what Ozai said when he welcomed Zuko home, believing his son had slain the Avatar and aided his sister in the secret coup of the Earth Kingdom. Suki chuckles, even though they’ve all long worn off any humor the comment might have held.

She needs to mock Ozai, because she’s still so goddam fucking terrified of his gleaming eyes and his calculating mind and his icy, inconceivable cruelty.

“Hey, little sis,” Suki says, and Katara knows she should be irritated at the older girl’s teasing tone, but the secret part of her that doesn’t scowl at babies held up for her to bless warms at the stupid nickname. “I take it you’ve seen the news?”

“If you can call it that,” she says.

“Is it true?”

“Is what true?”

“Katara! Did you sleep with Zuko or not?”

“No,” she says, and Suki sighs dramatically. “Girl. Dis.A.Point.Ing. He is totally your type!”

“My type is not whoever you think I should date!” She protests, biting her tongue to keep from laughing.

“I said nothing about dating,” Suki says, and Katara can hear her smirk, and she sighs, but her heart is all bubby and her body thrums in excitement. 

“We’re going to see a play,” she says, and she has to pull her phone away from her ear because Suki screams loud enough to wake the entire palace.

“I knew it! The devilishly handsome Fire Lord and the waterbending medical school attending trendsetting peacemaker princess are in love, a tale as old as time!”

“You’re the worst and I hate you.”

“No you don’t. I knew those calendars would provide you with motivation!” Katara briefly considers revealing Zuko’s invitation to be Master July, and thinks better of it. She’d never live that one down. “So, can I pick out your outfit?” 

“I was gonna ask Sokka-” she starts, and Suki laughs. 

“I’ll see what I have lying around. When’s your date?”

“Friday.”

“Eee! Katara! You have made my day!” Katara hears her brother’s voice grumbling on Suki’s end, and when she hears 

“Is that Katara? Did you ask her if I need to kill Fire Lord Jerkbender?” 

“Shut up Sokka!” She shouts, and hangs up.

She scrolls through her texts. There’s a lot of heart-eye emojis and pleas for information from her acquaintances from undergrad, and these she deletes without reading. She’d learned the hard way about confiding in her fellow students when the messy details about her relationship with Aang had leaked, and their friend group had almost fractured over the fallout.

Her publicist is in a tizzy, demanding to know whether this is a deliberate ploy for attention for the upcoming docuseries, and whether she was adequately compensated, and whether-

Katara deletes those too.

She checks Twitter, takes one look at the hideous AI monstrosity that is (supposed to be) a baby with half of Zuko’s features, and half of hers, and she logs off. Scars are not hereditary; not unless there’s been a new discovering about epigenetics in the past month or so. Instagram’s a little better. At least her account is private, limited to her close friends and family, so there's only a few off-color jokes.

Their shipping name is Kazoo, like the stupid musical instrument she had to play in kindergarten. At least when she was with Aang, it had been something semi-original. Kavatar. It had a ring to it. It’s not like she and Zuko haven’t ever been the subject of speculation before. In fact, according to the breakdown of internet fanfiction her publicist had prepared for her, theirs is the most popular ship.

It’s weird, reading strangers’ erotic fantasies about her. Her favorite is when nonbenders with only a poor grasp of how the elements work attempt to incorporate fight narratives into their stories.

Her second favorite is stories where no war was necessary, where Ozai was assassinated, or where Iroh took charge, and a love story unfolds in a pastoral setting with plenty of wine and good humor.

If they’d lost (dangerous territory; dwelling on the past never works out well) she wonders how they’d be written about. The Boy in the Iceberg made a big point of her romance with Zuko, back when she and Aang were still figuring out their feelings for each other. She was the strumpet who stole the Crown Prince away from his duties.

Is she with Zuko now? 

She decides not to think about it, because the answer is probably no. Zuko’s a sweet little kid, underneath all his finery and weirdly ostentatious manners and his frankly atrocious taste in music. (He claims it’s not his fault his uncle only ever listened to polka-reggae crossover blends while in exile, but radios do exist, and he had internet access. There’s no excuse for not enjoying modern alternative rock.) Probably he was embarrassed on her behalf that she’d been willing to put out and he very evidently had not, and he was trying to spare her complete and total humiliation.

It’s very Zuko to make situations a little bit worse while trying to make them better. He’s too wrapped up in other people’s feelings. She can’t help but wonder what would have happened if he had been slightly less of a Pisces. Probably he’d have stayed in the refugee camps in the Earth Kingdom, and the world would’ve fallen apart, and Phoenix King Ozai would have eaten them all for breakfast.

She decides to visit Azula.

________________________

When she’s in the Fire Nation, she has a rotating detail of bodyguards, a necessary precaution for such a public figure, or so Zuko informs her. She’s not supposed to go anywhere without supervision, like she’s a little kid in a market who could be kidnapped at any moment. One time, to make a point, she’d incapacitated all three of the men supposed to protect her with one hand held behind her back.

Zuko had laughed, but said it was a necessary part of security theater, and she would be endangering the nonbender residents of the royal compound, and did she really want to put his kitchen staff and his ministers and visiting school kids in mortal peril, etc. etc., and he’d guilt tripped her into allowing herself to be tailed like a hart during a hunt.

She’s grumpy about it, even if they do have a chic car to ferry her from place to place. It’s the latest off the assembly lines, with bulletproof glass and a weight distribution designed to make it difficult for either earthbending or waterbending to flip.

She remembers hurrying through Caldera’s streets on the day of the comet, feeling her power waning as the sky reddened, convinced she and Zuko both were about to be burned alive by Azula.

It’s much more pleasant to travel in air-conditioned comfort, with a mini-fridge well stocked with sodas built into the interior. She’d never tasted soda until she and Sokka discovered Aang and fled the reservation. It’s still too sweet for her.

The streets are packed with vendors and hawkers and children walking back to school from their lunch hour. Zuko had banned corporal punishment and instituted a series of educational reforms designed to mitigate the worst of Ozai’s brainwashing, one of which was a mandatory midday break spent in the (recently converted) public gardens.

That’s the thing about Ozai. For all of his insanity, he truly wasn’t insane. He understood children, he understood people, he knew how to make everyone around him do what he wanted.

He’d sicced his daughter on bugs as a toddler, and Azula’s training had progressed from there. from there. Spidersnakes, rabbitrats, flightless pigeons, firefowl, badgerdogs, pathercats, ostrich horses, eaglemonkeys, people. She’d performed her first execution at eleven.

Katara watched a video of it once, in a stupor of desperate fascination and horror. Little Azula, her hair in perfect plaits except for one loose strand, her head scarcely past her father’s ribs, dressed in red and gold, weighed down by gems, had stepped forward, and assumed her stance. 

She’d hesitated, obviously. She was a fucking child. But Ozai had whispered something, and her spine had stiffened and she’d shot lightning out of her finger and fried the man alive.

Unrelatedly, she was also the youngest firebender ever to produce white lightning, and only the seventieth in all of recorded history. It was a masterful display.

There’d been another tape, this one from a security camera, kept by some unknown archivist, either out of a desperate hope that someday Ozai would see justice, or else out of carelessness.

No one careless survived in Ozai’s court for long.

In the video, which Katara watched with rising bile, with hatred, with terror, Ozai grabbed his sobbing eleven year old daughter and demanded to know why she was upset. Didn’t she want the traitor to suffer? Didn’t she want to punish the woman who dared (dared!) to flee the Fire Nation army and attempt to seek asylum in the Earth Kingdom?

His fingertips left burns on Azula’s pale skin.

Katara hates Ozai so much she can hardly breathe, sometimes. When she was eleven, her father still read her bedtime stories when he had shore leave, he still cooked her macaroni with spam cut into animal shapes, he still picked her up like she was a baby and made snow angels with her and listened seriously as she told him about what she learned in school. He’d even have tea parties with her and pretend to be some princess ripped from the Fire Nation provided history primer, even though his face twisted when she told him about the firebender’s incredible deeds, and how she wished her own people were half so brave or resourceful.

That had been before she knew he was an insurgent, when she thought he was simply a crab trawler on one of the many Fire Nation galleys. 

She hates Ozai, for training his daughter, and an entire generation of schoolchildren, to regard mercy as weakness.

Zuko hadn’t ever managed to kill the bugs. He’d refused, sat down and cried, and his father’s punishments only made him cry harder. His grandfather had put a stop to the abuse, for a time, before his unfortunate passing.

Katara doesn’t believe in capital punishment. She doesn’t believe in the death penalty. She knows that executions, public or secret, are damaging to a country’s social fabric, do not deter crime, and run the risk, however slight, of taking an innocent life. 

But by La and Yue, she wants to choke Ozai with his own blood.

As the car drags her through the crowded streets of the capital (shockingly, Ozai invested very little of the Fire Nation’s budget into infrastructure), she makes a list of ways she’d murder the former Fire Lord, and she feels much better.

Then she shuts her phone off, because she is getting way too many notifications.

________________________

Azula is sitting curled up on a sofa when Katara enters her room, her knees drawn to her chest, staring out the window at the verdant, sloping side of the dormant volcano.

“Hey Azula,” she says, and the girl meets her gaze for a moment. “I brought you something.” She pulls out a pack of playing cards, a children’s deck with colors only, not the traditional animals.

Azula has negative reactions to animals, which Katara learned the hard way.

Zuko had said, once, that his sister used to love turtleducks almost as much as he does.

“Hi,” Azula says, almost slurs. Zuko needs to ban chi-blockers as an acceptable means of restraint, it’s not fair, it’s dehumanizing.

She’s spent a fair few months on them herself. She knows they’re efficacious. But she hates how they leave their user disoriented and woozy and only half awake.

“It’s such a nice day outside,” she says. “Maybe I’ll go sit in the gardens later, but I’m just going to play solitaire for a while.” She lays out the deck on the table, and takes the seat across from the girl, who, if she’d had a normal life, would have graduated about a month ago.

She picks her way through the cards, aware of Azula’s slowly dawning interest, and she talks about her undergraduate honors thesis on the implementation of microscopic bending in children’s oncology treatments. 

“Wrong,” Azula says, and for a moment, Katara believes she’s critiquing her thesis, but she points to a pattern that had escaped her notice, a shortcut to winning, if one can be said to win solitaire.

Katara is a prodigy in her own right, but Azula is something beyond anyone she knows. Zuko said she used to do a party trick where she’d count cards and pretend to lose, only to hold her true hand in reserve, and win at the end. She hadn’t even played for money, she’d just played for winning’s sake.

“Thanks,” Katara says.

“Are they okay?” She asks. Katara knows this question. Sometimes they are Zuko and Iroh and Ursa and Lu Ten, sometimes they are Ozai and his ministers, sometimes they are Mai and Ty Lee, most often, it’s her squadron of secret police, in jail for war crimes.

“Yeah, they’re fine, I wouldn’t worry,” Katara says, and Azula smiles dreamily. She almost looks her age, almost looks twenty, when her face is relaxed, and her hair frames her delicate features, and .

“Okay,” Azula says. She doesn’t speak again, even when she and Katara take tea in the gardens, but she does murmur goodbye when Katara leaves around midafternoon.

________________________

She finds a letter on her desk, written on heavy parchment stamped with Zuko’s royal seal in red wax. She opens it, and is surprised to find it written in his own hand.

Zuko’s got two handwritings: the terse, exceptionally fine calligraphy he uses for characters, and the sloppy, jumbled letters he uses for demotic.

It’s the latter that she’s holding, except for her name, which is written in red ink, and outlined with gold, and is beautiful enough to frame.

_Katara,_

_Sorry. I’m really, truly sorry. **Fire AND Ice** is not the headline you deserve._

_If this changes stuff for you, that’s ok. I get it._

_If not, dinner? I’ll be free around eight._

So, he either is serious about this whole date thing, or he is really, really trying to make her feel better about humiliating herself.

She faxes his secretary a thumb’s up, because she’s endlessly amused by how irritated he gets when she uses emojis to communicate with his staff, because all official communications are a part of historical record, and in some archive somewhere, her missives will be preserved for all eternity.

Her phone dings a minute later. “Seriously‽” Only Zuko would use the interrobang while texting.

He sends through an lol a second later, as though scared she’ll misinterpret his ire as anything but a joke.

________________________

Zuko, it turns out, is not free until nine, by which time she’s resorted to eating the platter of (ideally) decorative fruit.

He sweeps in, his topknot still held in place by his crown, his robes still the semi-formal attire of a working Fire Lord. She feels underdressed, despite her ankle-length gown. It’s so easy to forget that Zuko, her friend is also Zuko, the Fire Lord. She rises to greet him, her heart clenching. He is beautiful, even tired and overworked and hungry.

“Sorry,” he says. “I feel terrible, you must be starving.”

“Nah, I ate your dragonfruit.”

“Good, good. You could’ve started.”

“It’s fine, I hate a late lunch. Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, just a territorial skirmish in the demilitarized zone. Beifong Industries’ paramilitary goons were snooping around the guard house, one of my men fired a warning shot that ricocheted and took a chunk out of their armor, it was a mess. But I called Toph, and she called her mom, and her mom called her dad, and we got it sorted. I can officially say we’ve had peace for six years and one day, more or less.”

“Congrats,” Katara responds, and Zuko’s smile blinds her, momentarily.

“How’s Azula?” He asks, and she sighs.

“Chi-blocked. She seemed ok. She asked about them, whoever they are, but she drank her tea.”

“Thanks for visiting her. I wanted to, but it’s been busy lately.”

“It was fun,” she says. Zuko’s servants bring out a chilled green soup in centuries-old wedgwood bowls, and he places a spoonful of the liquid in the altar to Agni before him, and evaporates it with a burst of yellow flame.

“Sorry about last night,” he says. 

“I’m sorry too,” she says. “I’ve felt really weird all day-”

“What? No. Katara that’s on me-”

“But I kissed you-”

“Come on, I kissed you back.”

“You don’t regret it?” She asks him, and he makes a face.

“Do you?”

“No.”

“Well, me neither.” She laughs, and feels the tension in her stomach ease.

“When did you become so practiced at expressing your emotions?”

“I’ve always been an open book.” She looks at him, he slurps his soup, and when she raises her eyebrow, he chokes. “Fine, fine. Maybe I called my uncle.”

“How’d he react?”

“He told me to send him pictures so he doesn’t have to clip them out of the newspapers.” She rolls her eyes, and he blushes. Same old Zuko, beneath the gold and crimson. “But seriously, the article sucked.”

“Comes with the job,” she says, and he sighs, and rubs his eyes. “You’re tired.”

“Didn’t sleep much last night.”

“Zuko, you’ve got to rest more.”

“I had more interesting things to keep me occupied,” he says, and her stomach twists and she feels her cheeks heat. The servants clear away the first course, and present them with the main, a filet of fire-hen and a mixed vegetable puree. 

“Wine, Fire Lord?” the servant asks, and he shakes his head.

Zuko doesn’t drink the day after he gets drunk. She’s surprised she knows this, because it’s not something they’ve ever discussed, but as she thinks about it, she realizes she’s right.

His father never drank. His mother did.

“Princess Katara?”

“Please.” The glass is set before her, but the server, evidently nervous, manages to splash her dress. She braces herself for the inevitable outburst of forgive me, Fire Lord, it was an accident and I beg your apology, please do not immolate me and my entire family for spilling a drop of liquid on your guest’s dress. But instead, the young man hands her a rag, and says,

“My apologies, Princess. I was incautious.”

“No harm, no foul,” she says, and she wrings the liquid from the fabric with her hands. The man bows to her, and when he leaves the room, Zuko grins. 

“Not bad, huh?”

“I’m impressed,” she says. “How’d you manage to convince them you weren’t going to have them murdered?”

“I started pouring a whole goblet of wine over my head every time they begged me to spare their lives.” She giggles.

“You’re not serious?”

“I only had to do it four times.” She laughs, but her heart clenches. It should be a joke, and absurdity, but it’s not. “My uncle says congratulations on med school, by the way,” he says, perhaps sensing her somber mood. “He really wants to attend your white coat ceremony, and he says if you host the afterparty anywhere but the Jasmine Dragon he will never forgive you.”

“I hadn’t even thought that far,” she says.

“He’s contacting your secretary,” Zuko says, and although he rolls his eyes, Katara can see the way his mouth creases when he speaks of his uncle. “I’d like to come too,” he says, softly. “Just tell me when and I’ll take the day off.”

“Really?” She asks. She knows how busy he is, how long his days stretch, how tirelessly he works. 

“Yeah,” he says. “Of course.” And her stomach warms pleasantly and she takes a sip of her wine, and if it wasn’t for the fact that the man beside her has a gold pin in his hair and is wearing clothes three centuries out of vogue, she could be on a normal, stomach-tingling date.


	3. Zuko's terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day ends in a sublimation of his emotions, which is frankly quite typical

It’s been a day full of disappointments, and it's only 1PM. Half his discretionary public education funds had to be diverted to salvage the Metropolitan Museum of Bender History, which collapsed during a freak storm, which means his plan to bring libraries to the provinces will have to be pushed back another year. His proposal to make childhood vaccines mandatory was met with a surprisingly large resistance last week and really tanked his approval numbers according to the Lallup Poll released today, and the (newly) free press won’t stop asking him if he’s sleeping with Katara.

And his Defense Minister won’t stop haranguing him about the Western Agate. He knows it’s a problem, he knows there’s going to be conflict over it, he knows he might actually need to call Aang if he can’t get Kuei’s people to agree to some kind of detente. They have his uncle as a hostage, what more do they want?

“Sorry, Fire Lord,” Sister Amara says apologetically. “The Princess Azula is indisposed.”

“Meds again?” He asks, and the nurse nods.

“We’re experimenting with a new dosage of chi-blockers and anti-depressants that will ideally leave her more alert, while still suppressing the worst of her triggers. Unfortunately, it’s an experimental process, and we haven’t found a dosage that gives her the desired results. I’m sorry you had to travel all the way here; she was alert until she ate, but she crashed after lunch.”

“That’s alright,” Zuko says. “Just tell her I stopped by?”

“Of course, Fire Lord,” the nurse says, and she bows. Zuko knows when he’s been dismissed; he dips his head to her, and finds Ty Lee waiting for him by his car.

“No luck?” She asks, and he shakes his head.

“Out for the count,” he says.

It’s tradition, every Thursday and Saturday, for the members of the royal family to spend the hours of one to four engaged in personal business. When he was younger, his uncle used the time to take him and Lu Ten down to the beach to swim or fish or surf or paddle, and when he grew older, he was denied his leisure hours as a consequence for his poor bending.

He still has three hours, more or less, since he used the car drive to Azula’s facility to call Arnook and discuss repatriation of war children.

He knows it’s a terrible idea before he even thinks of it. But Thursday afternoons are family time, and he hasn’t been in more than a year, and he’s already on the right side of the river, and maybe-

“Take me to the New Caldera Military Detention Center, please,” he tells his driver. Ty Lee, beside him, stiffens.

“Zuko-” she protests, and he knows she’s serious, because when she’s his bodyguard, she always calls him Fire Lord.

Last time had been an unmitigated disaster, true. Last time he’d had his worst anxiety attack since the war, and he’d had to return to his cocktail of benzodiazepines for a couple of weeks, and his meetings had to be reshuffled, and Iroh had to be recalled from Ba Sing Se, which disrupted his H9-47B visa application as a lawful resident alien under state protection (which is really code for, the Earth Kingdom wants the Dragon of the West as far from the Fire Nation as possible, and they Were Not Pleased when he crossed their borders), but that was more than a year ago. He’s in a better place now.

“I give you permission to interrupt if it looks like I'm going to faint,” he tells Ty Lee, and she huffs indignantly.

New Caldera Military Detention Center is indeed new. It was built after the war to house war criminals. It’s a tall building of grey stone, well lit and well ventilated, with regular, nutritious meals and access to a library and spiritual counselors.

Zuko has seen the now disbanded Earth Kingdom prison camps. Zuko has seen the horrors of Boiling Rock. Zuko knows that true justice is never retributive. But Haru’s father died from pneumonia contracted in the Iron Galley Labor Camp, and his own father, despite being a war criminal, lives a life of peaceful solitude. It doesn’t seem just.

His motorcade is waved through, and before he can say anything, the guard sends up a signal, and the two massive tripods on either side of the gate are lit, signifying the Fire Lord’s presence.

It’s best, with Ozai, to avoid allowing him time to plan.

But Zuko’s here, he’s come all this way, he may as well stop in and ask how his father has been treated. Ty Lee walks behind him, her shoulders tense, her steps heavier than usual.

“Fire Lord Zuko,” the warden says, an old Earth Kingdom functionary chosen by the International Council for his reputation as detail oriented and moderate.

“Warden Sho,” he says. 

“You’ve come to see the prisoner?” the Warden asks. New Caldera Military Detention Center is home to some four hundred men, and seventy women. But all except for one are incidental. New Caldera Military Detention Center was built on Fire Nation land and staffed by Earth Kingdom guards to ensure that one man could be safely restrained.

“Yes, I’ve come to see Ozai.”

His father is housed in the northern wing. He has a cot and a sink and a flushing toilet and a space for meditation, and the ability, should he choose, to meet with an internationally licensed psychologist every fortnight. He is permitted one hour of exercise per day, and five ten minute showers a week, and two supervised visits to the library per month.

For obvious reasons, he is not permitted to remain with the general population. Because solitary confinement is damaging to a prisoner’s mental and physical well-being, he is encouraged to communicate with approved persons via letter.

Such persons include Iroh and Aang. Zuko has long ago given up on allowing his father to write to him.

Warden Sho knocks his nightstick against the bars once, and Ozai does not move from his meditative pose.

“Ah,” he says, his voice soft. “My esteemed son has graced me with his presence.”

What Zuko would have given to hear those words when he was younger.

“Hello, Ozai,” he says. “Warden Sho, Ty Lee, please leave us.”

“Of course, Fire Lord,” Ty Lee says, in a tone that says _Zuko, you fucking idiot, I will murder you and then I’ll call Suki up and get her to murder your dead body._

“Call if you need me, Fire Lord,” Warden Sho says.

It was his office floor that Zuko had vomited on last time. Best not to think about that.

“It’s been a while, Zuko,” Ozai says. “I was beginning to think you’d forgotten me.”

“No such luck,” Zuko says, and Ozai almost laughs. 

“Just poor manners, then? Of course you’d have no respect for your ancestors, you never did.”

“Don’t you have anything else to scold me about?” Zuko asks. Time was his father’s words would have wounded him, but hearing the same refrain for twenty three years tends to dull its edge.

“Well since you asked,” Ozai says. “You should never have ceded Yang Lan province.”

“Who is providing you with newspapers?” Zuko asks, softly. That is one of his strictest rules, his father is not permitted to know anything about national affairs.

“You think I need a newspaper to parse the repercussions of your idiocy? There’ve been sugar shortages for months, and I know you’ve had to cut funding for your national parks project. You stupid boy, you really thought if you’d give the Earth Kingdom what they wanted then they’d withdraw troops from the Western Agate, didn’t you? If you’d asked your father, I could have told you what would happen. You’ve weakened your northern borders; you’ve denied yourself access to a port and a staging ground, you’ve left yourself without a treaty, and your only bargaining chip is another colony. I’m right, aren’t I?”

“We will have peace,” Zuko says. There is not a knot forming in the back of his throat, and his heartrate is not accelerating, and he is not breathing more quickly. Ozai turns to face him, his hair prisoner-short, his eyes sparkling with fury.

“You’re still such a fool.” Ozai says. “You think the Earth Kingdom wants peace? We were fighting over territory long before Sozin’s time. How much land are you going to cede to those dustbathers before you realize the only way to have peace is to ensure that no one is capable of waging war against you?”

“If I wanted advice I’d ask one of my counselors,” Zuko says. Ozai’s right, of course. It’s been a diplomatic nightmare that’s cost Zuko literal weeks of worrying. Kuei’s a pleasant man, easy to handle, easy to talk to, but the confederated kings and the Council of Five are a different matter. Bumi, when he isn’t playing Pai Sho or smoking dope, has made it very clear that he wants control of the river route down to Ilaong Bay, and he’s extraordinarily opposed to the demilitarization of the Western Agate.

“Want to know how I’d solve it?” Ozai asks. 

“No,” Zuko says. His father shrugs.

“That’s your mistake, most _honorable_ Fire Lord.” Zuko’s surprised, over and over and over again, at how easily his father can hurt him. “You know,” Ozai says, almost conversationally. “It’s really not in my interest for the Earth Kingdom to take over. Your weakness has rarely worked in my favor, but in the instance of my imprisonment, it’s been quite handy. You and the Avatar both lack the bloodlust necessary to achieve anything. The Earth Kingdom, when they sweep your borders and hang you for whatever crime is most convenient, will give me a death I’d prefer to avoid. I can help you, Zuko. Agni knows you need it.”

“I’m fine,” he says, weakly. Fuck. Where’s Ty Lee when he needs her?

“Most Fire Lords make a point of not having conversations with their political prisoners,” Ozai says. “Do you know how often I visited Iroh?”

“Once,” Zuko says. His father furrows his brow, and then his face smooths.

“Oh, you’re right. I forgot about the finger thing. You have no idea how satisfying that was, how cathartic, Zuko.” Ozai wiggles his own, contemplatively, and Zuko knows Warden Sho would say absolutely nothing if he were to injure his father. It’s tempting, tempting, tempting. “But anyway,” Ozai says. “Apart from that minor diversion, I did not, as the uncultured are wont to say, _hang out_ in his cell.”

“First you complain that I don’t visit you enough, now I visit you too often. Nothing I do is good enough.” It’s supposed to be a joke; it sounds like a joke in his head, but Ozai’s mouth twists into a close approximation of a smile.

“Correct.”

“I’m leaving,” Zuko says. “I’m glad you’re well; I’ll see you in another year.”

“Move your state-sponsored trade to Sangra Sila and stoke a bidding war between Omashu and Gaoling by undercutting their price for raw metals. Frame it as an act of generosity towards the Earth Kingdom; you can afford it, provided you haven’t squandered the reserves, and you’ll come off looking well. You’ll drive the price down so much that Beifong will try to illegally fix it with you; you can bring evidence of this to the Council of Five, and threaten to make it public if they don’t demilitarize the Western Agate. Three of the five are beholden to Beifong, they’ll want to protect him, and they won’t struggle to convince Kuei.”

Zuko tries not to listen, he really does. But his father’s plan is so logical, so methodical, so rational, that he can’t help but listen.

“Goodbye, Ozai,” he says.

“Come again, Zuko.”

________________________

In the car, he draws his soundproof partition with an apology to Ty Lee, who is still very unprofessionally fuming, and he dials Toph.

One ring. Two. Three. Four. Fuck. He’s gone fucking insane.

“Hiya Sparky.” Her voice is tinny, like she’s deep underground and the reception is terrible. “Twice in two days? Something’s gotta be good.”

“Just wanted to say hi,” he says.

“Bullshit.” The line is crackly, but her expletive comes through loud and clear. “I can tell when you’re lying, Dumbass.”

“That is no way to speak to the Fire Lord.”

“Spill, Zuko, spill.”

“I have a question about your dad.”

“Motherfucker Zuko, again? Seriously? I try not to speak to him except on the solstices, you’re making that very difficult.”

“What would he do if I undercut him on raw metals?”

“Depends on how much and how long.”

“Say twenty percent for six months.”

“Oof. You’d really bitch up his third quarter. If you’re gonna do it, wanna tell me ahead of time so I can sell my stock?”

“Please don’t get me tanged up with insider trading. Please Toph.”

“I’m joking. I sold all my shares years ago. Mostly.” He groans, and Toph positively cackles. “I dunno what he’d do. He’d probably try to undercut you, but he can’t sustain such low prices for so long without some serious financial penalties. If I had to guess, I’d say he’d try to fix prices with you to cut out Bumi’s trade from Omashu. Which is, in case you’re curious, very very illegal. Why?”

“No reason,” Zuko says, faintly.

“You’re lying, Sparky.”

“I know.”

“Look, I’m a mile underground and it’s getting a bit stuffy, I’ve gotta go. I’m calling my broker in about three hours, so unless you want an international incident you better act fast.”

“Toph!”

“I’m joking. Mostly. Bye!” She hangs up, and he sits back. He thinks every bad word he knows, more than once, and calls his secretary. She answers a quarter of the way through the first ring.

“Good afternoon, Fire Lord.”

“Hi, Myra. Can you schedule an emergency meeting with my trade minister and my chief metallurgist and my senior economist and my information specialists for the South and South-Western Earth Kingdom please? I’d like it either today or tomorrow.”

“Of course, Fire Lord. You have a formal meeting with the Chief Ambassador of the Northern Water Tribe for two hours this afternoon, and a dinner with the Advocate’s Guild this evening, and you’re taping an address for the Kindergarten Class of AG 107 tonight. You do have a designated leisure evening tomorrow; would you perhaps be willing to give that up?”

That’s when he’s supposed to see the play with Katara.

She’ll understand. Hopefully.

“Sure. This one is Clearance Level Six, just so you know.”

“I’ll keep it off the books, Fire Lord,” she says. 

“Thanks Myra.” She hangs up; he sighs.

He’s still got about two hours of personal time. He slides back the soundproof barrier, and avoids Ty Lee’s eyes.

“Hey Gunna?” His chauffeur sits up straighter.

“Yes, Fire Lord?”

“Would you inform the rest of the escort that we’re making a detour? I’d like to stop by the Asang Wharf Market.”

“At once, Fire Lord.”

________________________

It’s almost eleven by the time he’s finally permitted to leave the studio where, for the past five hours, he has been repeating the same few lines ad nauseam. The little speech is stuck in his head now, which is wonderful. At least he vetoed the part where they wanted him to sing Humpety-Dumpety. 

He checks his phone, and he realizes he never actually texted Katara. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

It’s been a fucking hell of a day.

He should never have seen Ozai. Is he seriously considering his father’s advice?

He’s got Katara’s gift wrapped up in his pocket. She’s probably still awake, she’s always up at night, she loves sleeping in. He’s jealous of how easy it is for her to remain in bed past dawn.

His guards are still tailing him like lost puppies.

“Go home,” he says. 

“Agni’s blessings, Fire Lord,” the one on his left (Ola? Lalla?) says. The other merely bows.

He’s left alone in his hallway.

Katara’s rooms are in the Visiting Dignitaries Suite. He should visit, just to make sure his guests are comfortable. There was that loose scorpion-pug that bit Bosco the last time Kuei visited (Agni, someone should do the world a favor and turn that bear into a rug), who knows what might be lurking in the walls?

Katara’s light is on when he passes by her door.

He probably should just text.

But.

Agni damn it. He’s the Fire Lord. He’s literally one of the most powerful people on earth. (And he’s taking advice from Renowned War Criminal and Worst Father Ever Ozai, but hey, nobody’s perfect.) He can knock on a girl’s door.

Right?

She’s not a girl. She’s his best friend, she’s Katara. She’s spent the day touring two different hospitals. As the Fire Lord, he has a vested interest in understanding the healthcare facilities of his capital city. 

He knocks. 

Her door swings open, and he gulps, because she’s wearing a scandalously short dress that is completely in violation of the palace dress code. 

“Oh,” she says. “Hi.”

“Sorry,” he says. “I know it’s late. And it looks like you’re going out, so-”

“No,” she says.”Nope, just trying on this dress Suki express-shipped me from Kyoshi.”

“Oh,” he says. “It’s… very short.”

“You don’t like it?” She’s flirting with him, he knows. He takes a deep breath and tries to put four hours worth of absolutely wretched film production from his mind. 

“I didn’t say that.” She grins, and invites him into her rooms.

“It’s supposed to be for our date tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” he says. “About that.” Her smile slips slightly, and he feels a twist of guilt. “I have an emergency trade meeting.”

“Oh,” she says. He’s not imagining her disappointment.

“I’m really sorry, Katara,” he says. “I would much rather spend my evening with you.”

“It’s okay,” she says. “I know you’re the Fire Lord; I know you’ve got duties." She pauses, looks him over, and touches his face. "Are you wearing makeup?”

“Unfortunately. I had to film an address to the nation’s kindergarteners. I’ve spent the past four hours saying the same three minute speech over and over and over.”

“That’s amazing!” Katara says, way too enthusiastically. "What do you even say to kindergarteners?” He sighs, straightens his shoulders, and orates.

“When I was in kindergarten, I dreamed of serving my country, and now that I’m Fire Lord, I’m thrilled to say that every day I endeavor to do so. Every day, I’m reminded of how proud I am to serve you. You all make me so happy. I hope that every one of you, firebender or not, will work hard in the coming years, and I hope, as you move onto the joys and hardships of first grade, that you remember our Nation’s motto: Resurget ex flavillis ignis. Fire is reborn from embers. On behalf of myself, and the Fire Nation, congratulations, and may Agni shine upon you.”

“That’s adorable,” she says. “I hope they had you holding a turtleduck or something.”

“I’ll make sure to suggest it for next,” he says. His fingers brush against the box in his pocket; he has a moment to wonder if maybe this isn’t a bit much, and then, before he can chicken out: “I thought you might like this,” Her eyebrows draw, and he pushes it into her hands.

It’s an ornate lacquer box, an original Guri, in fact, and she lifts the lid and her mouth opens in a silent oh. 

“Zuko,” she gasps. “It’s perfect.” She pulls the stethoscope out, and her face lights up. His insides feel all squishy-trembly, and he mostly forgets about Ozai’s words, which are mixing unpleasantly with his speech to the kindergartners. He’s going to have nightmares tonight, he can already tell. “And you even had my name engraved!”

“I’m glad you like it,” he says. “I know you got one when you got your honorary degree from Caldera City School of Combat Medicine, but-”

“I didn’t really want to carry a gold-plated one around Ba Sing Se,” she says with a giggle, “I love it, thank you.”

“I hope you’ll forgive my need to reschedule,” he says.

He means to go. He really, truly does. He has a meeting at dawn with the Council of Concerned Parents for Educational Reform. But.

“Do you mind if I try it out?” She asks. Her voice is low, tempting.

“Not at all,” he says, hopefully smoothly. She slips the stethoscope’s eartips into her ears and he, as he does for his quarterly physician’s appointment, unclasps his heavy outer robe and allows it to fall to the ground, and he untucks his shirt and sits.

Except, instead of sitting on a paper-covered examination table, he sits on the edge of her bed. She, the ideal future doctor that she is, rubs the diaphragm between her palms so the metal isn’t uncomfortably cold when she presses it to his chest..

He breathes deeply at her prompting, and he watches her eyes flicker.

“Your pulse is so fast.”

“Generalized anxiety disorder,” he says. Seven years ago, he would have denied having a mental illness until he was blue in the face. Funny how much can change.

“Mmm. Stressful day?”

“You have no idea.” She clucks sympathetically. She leans over him, and he can see the fringe of black lace panties beneath her heinously low dress as she shifts the stethoscope to his back.

“Breathe,” she orders, and he sucks in a deep breath, and holds. “It’s getting faster,” she says. Her other hand rests on his chest, and he exhales. “And faster still,” she says, her voice amused. She trails her hand down his shirt, and she runs her fingers over his taut stomach. He gasps despite himself, and she laughs.

“Aren’t you being unethical?” He teases, and she huffs.

“You’re not my patient.” Not anymore, at least. Her fingers skim the butterfly scar of Azula’s lightning, his nerves still mostly unresponsive six years later.

“So you’re just examining my chest for the fun of it?”

“I guess I am.” Her voice stokes the embers in his stomach, her fingers are feather-light against his skin.

“Katara,” he pleads, and she draws back.

“Zuko?” Her voice is suddenly hesitant.

“Please.” 

“Please what?”

“Kiss me.” Her blue eyes glimmer, and he can tell she’s working hard at repressing a smile.

“Well, since you ask so nicely.” She lays her stethoscope in its lacquer box, and he watches her movements with rapt attention. Her dress really is scandalously short.

Her lips are hot against his own, her tongue hot and eager in his mouth, he allows his fingers to wander up the bare skin of her thigh. He brushes his knuckles against the lace of her panties, and she fumbles with the zipper of her dress. 

When he’s imagined having sex with Katara, which he’s done more than he cares to admit, he’s always pictured it as slow and tender and filled with open-mouthed kisses against sunwarmed skin. Romance-novel stuff. Unrealistic stuff.

You’re going to regret this, he tells himself. You have to be up in six hours. And you’re all feelings-y. 

But he’s already half-hard, and he’s not going to sleep tonight anyway, not with Ozaii’s words rattling around in his skull. She’s dripping wet when he slips his finger between lace and skin, and she arches into his touch, and he, like a good little soldier of the Fire Nation, compartmentalizes.

He stuffs all the weird swimmy fluttery Katara feelings down, (what is it with their Agni-cursed family? It took him literal months to get past his kiss with Sokka), and he chooses to feel with his body instead. He may not be great at recording messages for kindergarteners or being a brother or ruling the Fire Nation, but no one’s ever told him he’s bad at sex.

She slips out of her dress and draws his hands up to cup her bare breasts, and she slips her hands beneath his layers and layers of robes, and she finds him. He jolts when she touches him, which is not suave at all, but when he bites the tender skin of her neck she moans, so at least he’s not the only affected one. 

This is fine. He’s young and hormonal and horny, it’s completely natural and nothing to be ashamed about. Sating his bodily urges (with his best friend Katara) is completely 100% reasonable. 

“Condom?” He asks, because as much as his counselors desperately want him to have a child, they’d prefer it to be within the bonds of holy matrimony. 

“IUD,” she says. “And I’m clean.”

“Same,” he says. 

Not too long ago all forms of birth control were outlawed in the Fire Nation, and STD testing carried a pretty severe stigma. 

Zuko had not enjoyed making THOSE informational videos, not at all. 

She frees him of his robes, and he draws her down beside him.

“No codpiece this time?” She asks, and he turns an alarming shade of red.

“That was once, Katara. Once.”

“Once is one time too many. I nearly disowned you.”

“It’s tradition!” He protests. “You can’t expect me to revolt against centuries of tradition-”

“You literally style yourself as a revolutionary. You literally did revolt.”

“My advisors can excuse attempted patricide,” he says. “But they will not stand for an overthrow of traditional fashion.” She laughs, and his stomach goes all warm and liquid. Her breasts are warm and soft beneath his trailing fingertips, he slips one hand between her thighs and touches her lightly. She draws his lips up to hers, she wraps her ankles around his hips, and she looks at him with sea-blue eyes, her pupils dark and blown.

“Just fuck me, Zuko,” she says. So he does.

**Author's Note:**

> I know, I know, at this point I should probably just focus on the Zutara fics I have, rather than the fics I want to have. But here's another two-parter, just because. Next chapter: Katara's point of view. And the smut. Sorry, this one was a bit of a fake out.
> 
> Tell me if you think this is a dumb alternate universe idea.


End file.
